Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Two Worlds 2: Midas

The world Midas

Entering
orbit we saw farms, roads, settlements, and industrial areas. Strangely, there
was no radio traffic, nor boat or air travel; many islands and an island
continent were not part of the world-spanning industrial system.

We
dispatched landers to farms, settlements, factories, and one to the island
continent. First reports were contradictory and puzzling. No-one reported any
use of fire or metal; all were ignored by the natives, who were of a dazzling
array of different species. This is contrary to Helbertian’s Corollary, which
states that no planet evolves intelligence on two lines simulateously, it
having too sudden an onset. However, most of the natives appeared to be
unintelligent animals operating on instinct. Every lander agreed that they
cooperated to serve the intelligent master; but the landers disagreed as to
that master species’ identity.

On the farms Orange
Hexapods ran things, while in the settlements Large Green Bipeds exchanged
goods with the road-travelling Centaurs. Meanwhile the factories hosued bizarre
Tetramanual Apods which fabricated housing modules, wove Centaur panniers,
chipped stone reapers, and prepared chemicals from farm produce brought in by
Centaurs and Bi-Tentacular Elephantoids. Where the Apods the sentients, or were
they trained animals working for the Centaurs and Elephantoids, who took the
final produce? Or was it all for the Biped traders, or were the Bipeds just
trained messengers for the storehouse-guarding Black Squirrels, in whose
immense watertight wooden structures were stored vast quantities of sugar,
protein powder, salt, spices, vitamins, fertilizers, pest poisons, and herbal
drugs? Or were the Squirrels just housekeepers for the ubiquitous Irdidescent
Pantherium (the ‘All-beast’ or ‘Dragon’), which was fed and cared for by all?
Or was the Dragon just a well-armed guard animal kept to keep down pilferage,
to the ultimate advantage of the agricultural Hexapods? Or were the Hexapods
just pets being milked by the Centaurs? Or were the Centaurs beasts of burden
for the legless Tetramans? Round and round the circle went, with fractal twists
and eddies.

Where were the
sentients who constructed this fantastic living machine? It ran itself and
somehow adjusted itself to disturbances and fluctuations. The unknown sentients
had even provided a cross-species lingua franca of numbers, used by the animals to account for all exchanges. Where
were the master inventors?

Gradually specimens
came in, and we soon learned that none of even the major species had much
neural development. Were the sentients in hiding? If so, then how does the
system remain in uncontrolled equilibrium?

Incidentally,
specimens were hard to get. Dragons guarded all large settlements and
caravan/herds, making it dangerous to capture or kill any animals. Even energy
weaposn would be ineffective against the Dragon’s mirror-bright scales. One
Pantherium can take on any known predator from any world, and yet these
jeweled, clawed, fanged, bestingered, iron-thewed, snaggle-toothed armored
fighters are all herbivores! Or, rather, they, along with all other large Midas
animals, eat only the concentrated dry food prepared by Hexapods. The
sentient’s aim in this is clear; to standardize feeding, for food storage, for
save on transport weight, and above all, to ensure the dependence of the
animals upon the system. As such they have succeeded; there are no higher Midas
carnivores, and few higher herbivores.

We
could take no specimens, not even dead bodies, as these were all carted off to
make fertilizer. Nonetheless we did get specimens, all through to one
technician. Her actions were suspicious, so we kept close watch on her. One
night she left the lander, followed quietly by Doctors Tzu and Jones. Arriving
at a caravan camping by the light of a Bioluminous Bat, she uttered a peculiar
sound. This common signal had not yet been decoded by our computers.

A Ble
Rat emerged into the Bat-light and responded with a standard (undecoded by us0
response. The tech gestured at an Elephant’s pannier and brought forth a watch
(pilfered from ship’s stores, we later discovered). The Rat made a gesture; the
pannier was emptied; it contained a Centaur corpse. The Rat scurried from
corpse to watch, sniffed both, and signaled in the planet’s mathematical lingua
franca:

(this)
(here) equals three (that) (there).

The
tech indicated:

(negation).
(that) (there) equals two (this) (here).

Rat:
(negation). Two pont seven five.

Tech:
(negation). Two point two five.

Rat:
(sum) divided by two equals two point five.

Tech:
(negation).

Rat:
(capitulation)(assent).

Tech:
Two point two five.

Rat:
Two point two five.

Then
they exchanged one Centaur corpse for 2.25 digital watches. Change for the
third watch was given (after more haggling) in a few ounces of a certain powder
that turned out to be the now-famous Mindzap recreational drug. Thus we
uncovered the cause of a wave of petty thefts and bizarre pranks perpetrated by
the technical crew.

The
Rat inspected one watch closely; it strapped the ornament around its waist,
then gestured to the Elephant and scurried back to the caravan. The Elephant
trundled forth, picked up the Centaur, and followed the tech back to camp.

She had bartered for, and bought, the specimen, and this from a Blue Rat, known to have only
a rodent’s intelligence! This was the key to the puzzle; the reason why no
sentients were evident despite Midas’s elaborate market structure was that an
economic sense existed in all higher
animals there!

The
ecology of all Midas, except the island continent, was integrated with economics,
in fact was an economy! It evolves
genetically, like all ecologies, but the driving force of trade (as monetized
by the sucrose standard) had speeded up and elaborated its evolution to make it
mimic an industrial society! In fact it was one, despite lacking true language,
sentience, or organizing principle except for do-evolution, or the Invisible
Hand of the Market, if you will.

Lander
17, on the island continent, proposed this explanation of the origin of this
unique ecology/economy: now on the island continent, as on all Midas some
hundred million years ago, there were two forms of vegetation, A and B, that
grow in separate clumps. A certain territorial herbivore required both A and B,
but usually couldn’t control a territory big enough for both kinds. They
evolved a rudimentary quid-pro-quo food barter system; this proved a success,
and later evolved into true money; then the species radiated into thousands of
forms, filling all available niches.

Trade
with Midas is brisk, with metal tools, fertilizer and antibiotics going for
Midasan Methuselah, Mindzap and Aphrodite drugs, which do work on humans as
advertized. There are no colonization prospects, as the natives resent
trespass, and enforce their resentment by sending Pantheria; and a full-grown
Dragon can best a Star Class Battle Cruiser! However, some humans have chosen
to ‘go native’ and hire themselves out as traders, chemists, farmers, workers,
warehousers, etc. Few do as well as the money-wily natives, but at least all
can get Methuselah, Mindzap and Aprhodite cheaply. Their population is fixed at
a constant level; the niche for Humans is limited.

Some
claim that the general level of intelligence in Midas’s co-evolved economy has
been rising lately. Perhaps humans have provided an impetus. There may soon be
several thousand new intelligent species. Some are excited by this prospect,
others dismayed.

Who
knows what the future will bring? For now, Midas appears to be a blue-chip
investment.